Crystal Balderdash: 2013's Worst Predictions

The Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann once said, "You can make predictions, and a year later people won't remember them." But that didn't stop Politico Magazine from listing the worst predictions of 2013. Here's #1 on their list of worst predictions—"The Obamacare Rollout Will be Great." Slate writer Matt Yglesias said, "I wanted to once again take the opportunity to lay down a marker and say … that Obamacare implementation is going to be a huge political success." Not quite. In May of 2013 Salon's Blake Zeff emphatically declared, "Anthony Weiner can actually win the NYC mayor race." A month later, talk-show host Glen Beck predicted that something terrible would happen to the U.S. Government. Beck claimed that this unnamed disaster will "take down the GOP, it will take down the Democrats, it will take down many members of Congress." Hum, I wonder what all that was about. And, finally, there was the science journalist Clive Cookson's confident assertion about life on Mars: "I predict that by the end of 2013 we will have firm biochemical evidence for biology on Mars." (Financial Times, Dec. 30, 2012.)